Wednesday, December 24, 2014

I thought of writing this entire post in rhyme mimicking the original poem...but it's already past midnight so I threw that idea out the window.

'Twas the night before Christmas, and at the Freeze house...

We draw pictures (we're halfway through our second ream, thanks to four children who start drawing the minute they wake up)

We decorate with paper. Because it's pretty and it's cheap!

We are tearing apart our master bedroom/bathroom, putting in a shower, and installing a sleeping loft. There is plaster/cement/rock dust everywhere.

Which means we are sleeping on the living room floor. See our mattress next to the dining table?

We have beams and plywood and other building materials inside and out

We also bought a big Jacuzzi corner tub for our other bathroom (floor model! 1/3 the original price!) and are storing it on the bed in Ivy's room. This means I have to curl up on a tiny spot on the bed to nurse Ivy at night. Kind of a pain. Oh, and to get it in the bathroom we have to open up a hole in the wall :)

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Last week we went on a walk to see the Christmas lights. It was drizzling but warm. All these places are just a few minutes' walk from our front door!

On the Promenade du Paillon is a structure reminiscent of the off-shore Casino Jetée-Promenade, built in the late 1800s and destroyed in 1944 by German troops. You can see the fountains of the Miroir d'Eau behind the casino. The kids ran and rode their scooters through the water. Amazing how they don't care if they get wet even in cold weather.

The original casino circa 1891. This was at the height of Belle-Epoque Nice, when the English came down in droves during the winter season. Hence the walkway along the ocean named the "Promenade des anglais."

Friday, December 12, 2014

We made this 5-minute video about our family's decision to relocate to Nice--who we are, why France and why Nice specifically, some of the risks and challenges of leaving our life back home, what we were looking for versus what we ended up with in an apartment, and our life now in Nice.

Wednesday, December 03, 2014

Ivy and I have lots of one-on-one time during school days. During the mornings I can pretend that I'm a mom of just one child instead of four. We go on long walks, run errands, clean the house, go to the park, or just side by side as I read and she plays with toys.

Ivy is little enough that I can pretend she's still a baby. She will be our last--barring some extraordinary circumstance--and I am already mourning the loss of her babyhood. It's more than that, really; it's the end of a stage of my life as a young mother. As long as I have one baby, I still feel like I am in that group. But it's coming to an end. I'm not sure if I'm ready for the next stage of my life. I keep thinking of what's coming and honestly I don't know if I'm very excited.

Parenting keeps getting more complicated as my kids get older, and I miss the sheer joy and simplicity of raising babies. I don't have much to look forward to once I no longer have a baby underfoot. Teenagers? Bleh. My kids turning into adults and leaving me alone? Sob.

So tell me I have something to look forward to. Because I thinking of growing older and aging and getting wrinkles and health problems (okay, maybe some of this is a long way off!) and my kids getting bigger and none of it seems interesting. What I'm trying to say is: having newborns and babies has been, for me, the Best Thing Ever and I don't know if anything else can make up for the loss of that part of my life.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

On Zari's birthday, Ivy started telling a story. It was epic. She included dramatic gestures, earnest facial expressions, and carefully timed pauses. It lasted at least 20 minutes. I caught a few minutes on film.

Wednesday, November 12, 2014

I am passing along a message from a researcher, Karol Petrovska, collecting responses from mothers who planned vaginal breech births (regardless of outcome). Here's an excerpt from the survey:

This study aims to explore experiences of women who have been diagnosed with a breech presentation late in pregnancy and plan for a vaginal breech birth.

This survey is aimed at women who have planned a vaginal breech birth at or close to full term in the past 7 years. We are interested in your experiences regardless of whether the final outcome was a vaginal breech birth or a caesarean section. Sharing your experience with us is greatly valued and your views will contribute to improving care provided to pregnant women with a breech baby.

This survey is requesting information about your decision making process for planning a vaginal breech birth. It should take approximately 20 minutes of your time to complete.

Karol is working with Professor Caroline Homer and Associate Professor Andrew Bisits from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. If you qualify, please take a few minutes to add your experience!

Sunday, November 09, 2014

It was one of Those Days where everything goes awry and you somehow pull through. We spent much of yesterday baking cookies and cakes to share afterward. I finished sewing the sash for her baptismal dress last night at 10 pm. And of course, I *had* to come down with fever, chills, sore throat, stuffy nose, and achy body. Great timing. And Ivy decided to wake up 4-5 times.

Also our printer broke so I had to borrow our downstairs neighbor's printer last night to print the program and the violin-piano duet that my mom and I played. This meant that we weren't able to practice the music until today during church.

The biggest craziness today was a major plumbing problem at the church: the hot water ran out after just a few minutes, so the water in the baptismal font was cooooold. Several men formed a bucket brigade and were heating pots of water on the stovetop and pouring them into the font. It turned the water from ice-cold to just kind-of-cold. Zari was a trooper, though, and didn't fuss despite the cold dunking! "It wasn't quite as cold as the ocean!" I warmed her up afterwards with a hair dryer.

In the end, it was a lovely day for our family. My mom and I both gave short sermons (mine was en français, bien sûr!) before our duet. We sang my all-time favorite hymn "Souviens-toi, mon enfant." And we feasted on Lebkuchen cookies (my German grandma's recipe) and brown butter pumpkin cake (sugar cut in half for the cake batter).

Because I am a birth nerd, I worked in some stuff about birth. Baptism is, after all, a symbol of re-birth...emerging from the water and from darkness into the air and light. It's not every day that you get to talk about amniotic sacs at church! Haha!